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Hollywood Takes a Roman Holiday ... Again

Workers at the Cinecittà film studios painted a Roman temple set in March.Credit
Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

ROME — Inside the Cinecittà film studios, originally built by Mussolini in part to produce fascist propaganda, a catapult is parked beside Soundstage 13. Not far away, craftsmen touch up chariots. The props are for the remake of the 1959 swords-and-sandals epic, “Ben-Hur,” which is consuming much of the vast studio lot, if not all of it.

Five soundstages are being used to film the Ben Stiller comedy “Zoolander 2.” And crews for the James Bond thriller “Spectre” used the studio in March while shooting scenes around Rome, including at the Ponte Sisto, the ancient pedestrian bridge over the Tiber River, and along the boulevards of Nomentano.

The recent arrival of Hollywood — which famously trekked here in the 1950s and 1960s — is in part because Rome is one of the most visually alluring and historically resonant cities in the world. But it is also about money. Having watched different countries use financial incentives to attract lucrative Hollywood productions, Italy’s Ministry of Culture has sweetened the tax credits provided to foreign movie companies.

“This is what we were shouting for,” said Giuseppe Basso, the general manager of Cinecittà, who recently visited Los Angeles to pitch major studios to shoot films in Italy instead of other countries. “We were a company fighting against nations.”

For ordinary Romans, the new influx of movies has provided fodder for local paparazzi, as stars such as Mr. Stiller and Daniel Craig, who plays James Bond, have been spotted around town. And it has offered a new opportunity to vent regular complaints about how Rome is dirty and falling apart, and how city officials are doing too little about it — except when movies are in town.

“Dear James Bond,” wrote the journalist Fabrizio Roncone in a mock letter published in Corriere della Sera, a leading national newspaper. “Please don’t leave Rome! You managed something that seemed impossible. An example? You got traffic officers to work at night.”

ITALY

Rome

Cinecittà

Studios

Tiber

River

10 Miles

APRIL 6, 2015

By The New York Times

He added: “And to save the suspension of your legendary Aston Martin, a good number of potholes have been fixed. Believe me — a miracle!”

Inconveniences have hardly disappeared: Traffic snarls and parking shortages have become common in areas cordoned off for movie crews, even though most filming occurs after midnight. Bond spotting became a late-night sport in March for many Romans.

Crowds gathered after midnight along Corso Vittorio Emanuele II as crews filmed car chase scenes along the boulevard. The Ponte Sisto was shut down on several nights, as crews filmed chase scenes on the embankment beside the Tiber and a scene in which Bond parachuted onto the historic bridge (with help from a crane).

“Oh, yes, we realized they were here,” said Enzo Mencattelli, who owns a shop on Via Pettinari, adjacent to the Ponte Sisto, and complained that his customers had nowhere to park and that electrical wires for the movie lights obstructed his store. “They paid all the shops on the other side of the street but not on this side.”

The glory days of Hollywood filmmaking in Rome came during the 1950s and 1960s — the so-called era of Hollywood on the Tiber. To many Americans, the defining film was “Roman Holiday” (1953), which depicted Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck riding a scooter around Rome. But the big-budget productions were the historical blockbusters including “Quo Vadis” (1951) and “Ben-Hur.”

The biggest, “Cleopatra” (1963), became what was then the most expensive movie in history, with huge cost overruns that almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox. The two stars, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, had a torrid affair that provided fodder for gossip magazines around the world.

Photo

Giuseppe Basso, the general manager of Cinecittà Studios.Credit
Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

(By comparison, the biggest morsel of gossip to emerge during the shooting of “Spectre” is that Mr. Craig apparently bumped his head while driving the Aston Martin, courtesy of a Roman pothole.)

Antonio Monda, a film professor at New York University, said the Hollywood-Rome connection gradually diminished in the 1960s for different reasons, including Italian hiring quotas for crews. Foreign films still came to Italy, but countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic gradually began offering low-cost alternatives.

“If you don’t make a law that helps, some of the locations, even the most beautiful in the world — which is Rome — become less appealing,” said Professor Monda, who was recently named artistic director of the Rome Film Festival. “If you have to spend 100 euros in Rome and 30 in Romania, I’ll go to Romania. But if you can spend 40 in Rome and, say, 35 or 40 in Romania, I’ll go to Rome.”

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The policy was initiated last year and allows each production company to claim a tax rebate of up to €10 million on expenses incurred in Italy, meaning big-budget films produced by more than one company receive bigger savings.

Productions like the remake of “Ben-Hur” are estimated to spend up to €50 million during production in Rome alone. Last year, Italy generated €167 million from 53 foreign films being shot in the country, according to the Ministry of Culture.

“We hope it will continue to improve,” said Dario Franceschini, the culture minister. “The country has now become competitive.”

Out at Cinecittà, a small museum chronicles the era of Hollywood on the Tiber and the Spaghetti Westerns that were filmed in Italy in the mid-1960s and that made a star of Clint Eastwood. “Rome has always been a center of cinematography,” said Mr. Basso of Cinecittà, “and must be.”

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on April 7, 2015, on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: After a Long Absence, Hollywood Is Back on the Banks of the Tiber. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe